TEACHING MEANING VOCABULARY: PRODUCTIVE APPROACHES FOR POOR READERS

Abstract

Because most word meanings are learned from, exposure in context, and because poor readers read less and less challenging materials than do better readers, there is a gap between the word meaning knowledge of good readers and poor readers. To overcome this gap, direct instruction can help. But for such instruction to be maximally useful, it should be productive. Productive approaches to teaching word meanings involve teaching a set of target words in a way that generates knowledge of a larger set of words. We discuss three approaches to productive instruction: teaching children to derive word meanings from context; teaching word parts such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots; and teaching words as part of semantic groups. We suggest a two‐track approach to teaching word meanings, involving both teaching general strategies for learning words in a remedial setting and engaging poor readers in active vocabulary discussions in their regular classes.